Enterprise bargaining UNSW style against the union, the NTEU.

This also involves ADFA, ACT.

http://www.nteu.org.au/unsw/blog/view/post/postId/367

Please support some 70 academic and general staff who have been stood down without pay by UNSW VC Fred Hilmer for imposing bans on the recording and transmission of student results to the university.

Contribute to the special UNSW Local Hardship Fund.

Click this link to donate directly

https://www.nteu.org.au/shop_tools/donations/unsw

Posted 13 July 2010 by Ros O’Grady from University of New South Wales.

These protected action bans were necessary to get the VC to negotiate over long-contested conditions, on reinstating limits on fixed tern employment and the return of members to have union representation.

Negotiations are continuing.

The UNSW Student Representative Council organised a protest to support NTEU staff.

The CFMEU and other unions have declared support.

yraw voting-badge

They will keep Gillard’s Fair Work Act ‘that is not bad’, but with ‘tweaking’.

The ruling corporations and employer organisations know major sections of WorkChoices remain in the Fair Work Act.

Gillard and Crean promise no changes to the Fair Work Act.

Australian workers campaigned for Our Rights at Work. But as this blog shows, citing ACTU submissions, the Fair Work Act fails to deliver what was wanted for new legal effective rights.

WorkChoices has not disappeared, in the real world of industrial relations and laboor law.

This spin of the 2010 election is like Orwell’s 1984.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions. See ACTU press releases below.

As well, union activists are campaigning amongst union members in marginal seats in a strong anti-Abott push.

We see Abetz committing to not change the Fair Work Act.

This is unbelieveable in the face of demands by the corporates and their associations the BCA, Minerals Council, Mines and metals, AIG, MBA etc.

But Abetz admits ‘tweaking’.

Such as by regulation!

Regulations avoids Parliament.

Here is one example amongst hundreds.

Howard under WorkChoices had repressive anti-union ‘prohibited content’ regulations.

These extensive regulations banned unions and employers from agreement on many issues that these parties wanted to agree on.

These regulations were a severe breach of free collective bargaining.

Employers were forbidden to agree in collective enterprise bargaining to long-established rights.

One right forbidden was trade union training leave.

Union training is back under the Fair Work Act – see earlier blogs.

Abetz with his legal corporate lawyers will “tweak” regulations to continue making employees active in their unions ineffective and bias employers.

Prohibition by regulation severely legally restricted the ability for unions facing hostile management to disorganise.

WorkChoices’ essential anti-union thrust can be reintroduced as tweaks by the right-wing zealot Abetz – no doubt.

In the anti-Abott campaigning, unions promote the principles of a good industrial relations system.

The legislative framework has to be an advance of a labour law for the legal protection of collective rights for workers to effectively campaign for our economic, social and political interests.

Yet has Gillard a ‘way forward’ for workers’ rights?

Only minimally.

On the merits of industrial relations policy reform, the Greens have to be supported – at the local, regional and national level – and specifically in the Senate.

Here in Canberra, Lin Hatfield Dodds is the Greens candidate for one of the two ACT Senate positions.

The popular Labor Senator Kate Lundy Canberra will be returned comfortably.

Canberra has to reject the incumbent Liberal Senator Garry Humphries – in the past it was close. We shall see this time.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions.

ACTU Your Rights at Work

Coalition and WorkChoices pose big risks to jobs and Australia’s economic recovery

15 July, 2010
The biggest clouds on the horizon for working Australians are Tony Abbott’s plans to change the economic policy directions of the country and bring back the worst aspects of WorkChoices.

Australia’s economy is outperforming the rest of the developed world because of good management by the Labor Government and industrial stability from the Fair Work Act, but this would all be put at risk by the Coalition, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said more than 350,000 jobs were created over the past year, coinciding with the end of WorkChoices, and another 475,000 were forecast over the next two years.

But the reintroduction of WorkChoices and savage cuts to public services and infrastructure investment under the Coalition would jeopardise all that, Ms Kearney said.

She said the Labor Government’s economic record was in stark contrast to the Coalition’s plans.

“Last year as the Global Financial Crisis threatened Australia, the Government took tough decisions that protected jobs and set a platform for the recovery,” Ms Kearney said.

“Yesterday’s updated economic statement from Treasury gives working Australians cause for optimism for the next few years.

“The Labor Government’s Budget provides for investment in national infrastructure, skills and training, productivity and participation, better healthcare, and long-term improvements to national savings.

“Australia’s public debt is lower than almost all developed economies, and the Budget will be back in surplus within three years.

“The Liberal alternative would hurt working families.

“Tony Abbott opposes measures to stimulate the economy, will cut jobs and public services and is refusing to increase superannuation.

The Liberals will also abandon the National Broadband Network and wind back other key infrastructure projects.

“His main economic policy is to bring back WorkChoices by another name.”

Rights for working Australians is key issue for 2010 election
17 July, 2010 | Media Release This federal election is about the rights of all working Australians and the threat of a future return to WorkChoices under the Coalition, say unions.

Australian unions welcome the announcement today by Prime Minister Julia Gillard of a federal election on August 21, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said the 2010 election will be a referendum on the rights of people to have job security and decent working conditions.

“In this election working Australians have a clear choice between the Coalition which brought in WorkChoices and Labor which restored rights and protected jobs during the Global Financial Crisis.

“Unions will be campaigning in the election to ensure working Australians know the facts about the Coalition’s record of attacking workers’ rights and putting jobs and services for working families at risk.

“Australia’s economy is the best-performing in the developed world and 1000 new jobs a week have been created since the end of WorkChoices and the introduction of Labor’s Fair Work laws.

“Real wages have grown with low paid workers gaining a $26 a week pay increase and productivity is almost four times higher than under the Liberals’ last year in government.

“The Labor Government deserves credit for making a very solid start considering the difficulties of the GFC and working Australians and unions will expect more from its next term.

“The election of a Tony Abbott government will hurt working families.

“The Coalition opposes stimulus measures that are protecting hundreds of thousands of jobs and will cut government funding for jobs, infrastructure and important health and education services that families rely upon.

“The Coalition will abandon the National Broadband Network and other infrastructure projects and skills programs that are essential to drive national productivity.

“Workers will also be denied financial security in retirement by the Coalition’s refusal to support Labor’s move to increase national superannuation to 12%,” said Ms Kearney.

http://www.actu.org.au

yraw voting-badge

By Rob Durbridge AEU Federal Industrial Officer

The recent dispute over school league tables saw the
Australian Education Union and its associated unions
in all states and territories face directions and orders
by industrial tribunals to lift the moratorium imposed on
NAPLAN tests.

In the national jurisdiction these extended
to individual teachers and would have led to heavy fines for
contempt if they had been disobeyed.

In the event an agreement to review the My School website provided a settlement which has still to play itself out.

Fundamental issues were raised, such as the place of a teacher’s
professional role and the public interest in the face of an employer’s power to require work as directed. The Fair Work Act 2009 does not provide the means to resolve these issues on the basis of justice and fairness. State tribunals also showed themselves to be unable to come to grips with the issue. They were strongly influenced by the argument that state education departments stood to lose Federal funds if ‘partnership agreements’ entered into by bureaucrats to
implement national testing were not implemented.

The Fair Work Act and state laws need to be amended not just to
recognise employee and union rights but to prevent harm to children and the wider community.

The industrial relations laws of the states
need to give more scope for argument based on professional
responsibility when orders are sought to terminate industrial action.

Turning the clock back

Caning children was commonplace in schools in Australia until
the 1960s…it was teachers’ campaigns against corporal punishment which led to its banning in the face of considerable community and political opposition.

The ban on caning began in a similar way to the union moratorium
on NAPLAN tests…as an exercise of professional responsibility.

However, in states and territories where teachers are subject to the national industrial system their professional views were irrelevant in the cases brought to direct and order them to conduct the tests.

Failure to comply would have led to fines which were not
trifling…nearly $7,000 for each refusal to test or prepare to test
students, plus unknown amounts for contempt of the Court for not following its orders.

The union also faced hundreds of thousands
of dollars in fines for organising and for contempt. The evidence
for these crimes was being collected by the Fair Work Ombudsman
operating as an industrial police force.

Other than possible action by the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO)
all these proceedings have been terminated by the tribunal or the
employer. In the Federal Court this involved both parties agreeing
to bear their own costs. However, the FWO has foreshadowed
that it will write to the union in relation to alleged breaches of the
Fair Work Act by the Victorian and ACT branches. The FWO will
ask the AEU to “show cause” in relation to the breaches. It is not
clear under which section of the Act the FWO can require the AEU
to “show cause.” The FWO (“ombudsman” previously being a title
for an agency to stand up for individuals against abuse by the state) also continues to “monitor” the behaviour of the AEU and its
members for “compliance” with the law as revealed in its
correspondence.

Forcing professionals to deny their vocation

These issues should not just concern teachers. All workers exercise judgement and experience at work, over safety issues for example.

Forcing teachers to act against their professional judgement over
children’s education is no different to directing nurses to administer questionable medicines to children. If they refuse because medical opinion and their judgement tells them that some could suffer a reaction they would be in the same boat as the teachers in the
NAPLAN test cases. Ultimately they would be forced to choose
between the medicine or a crime.

In the teachers’ cases, professional opinion and international
experience were solidly behind the union’s argument that data
obtained through standardised tests should not be published in a
form which allowed the media to construct league tables of schools.

Academic, systemic and even government policy stands firmly
against league tables; in health terms they are toxic to students.

Yet teachers’ refusal to participate in tests which have been proven to provide the basis for league tables was judged “industrial action” and the system was moving inevitably towards fines.

The Fair Work Act does not allow for public interest arguments or
consideration of the merits of refusal by an employee to work as
directed.

If the action is taken while an industrial agreement is in
force, regardless of whether the subject of the dispute was included in bargaining or the agreement itself, any refusal or encouragement of refusal is illegal and must be stopped and, if it is not stopped, must be punished. (S 418 and S 419 of the Fair Work Act 2009)
A mockery of Fair Work standards

Minister Gillard, as Minister for Employment Relations, is primarily
responsible for this mockery of ‘fair work’ standards in the Fair
Work Act sections dealing with industrial action.

She is also the Minister responsible for the operations of the Fair Work Ombudsman which launched prosecutions in the Federal Court.

As Federal Education Minister it was Gillard who arm-twisted state
and territory government ministers to prosecute the unions under
the threat of funds to education systems being cut for breach of
performance of National Partnership Agreements on Transparency
and Reporting.

The origins of much of the ‘Fair Work’ legislation do not lie in
ALP or ACTU policy.

They are the result of meetings between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in August 2007 and major employer
organisations which resulted in the “Policy Implementation Plan”
to manipulate ALP policy adopted at the ALP National Conference
only months before.

These meetings with employers, including (ironically) the Mineral
Council and the Australian Industry Group, saw Julia Gillard declare there would continue to be a “strong cop on the beat” in the building and construction industry and over the whole workforce.

Work Choices restrictions on employment rights would continue.

This occurred behind unions’ backs while they were flat out
organising the “Your Rights At Work” Campaign in workplaces
and communities, a campaign acknowledged as one of the main
reasons for the defeat of the Howard Government.

Rudd and Gillard agreed that the Work Choices changes to the
constitutional powers of the Industrial Relations Commission would be continued so that arbitration on the merits to prevent and settle industrial disputes would not be possible by the new Fair Work Australia tribunal.

The rights and obligations of corporations and their employees
became the basis of the jurisdiction.

The Fair Work Act – not fair, won’t work

The legislation on which the new tribunal operates to deal with
industrial disputes does not give discretion or take into account
public interest…Section 418 simply says that FWA “must make an
order that the industrial action stop” if industrial action is
organised” during the life of an agreement…that is, generally in a
unionised workplace.

There is no discretion, no rights for time to prepare a case, no
allowance for expert evidence, no legal scope is given to show that
something is dangerous or against the public interest.

It must all be done quickly so work resumes on the employer’s terms…if it hasn’t been decided in two days, then the tribunal is required to make an interim order to stop industrial action.

This was what faced members
of the tribunal and the Court in the NAPLAN cases, who often
showed considerable understanding and even sympathy on the
professional issues. But it’s not about the settlement of disputes on just terms, it’s about the interests and rights of the employer.

The NAPLAN moratorium cases are living examples of how the
“master and servant” laws of the 19th century returned under
Howard’s Work Choices and Gillard’s Fair Work Act. There were
some improvements in the Fair Work Act, notably in the area of
statutory individual contracts, but the result is still worse than the
Reith legislation prior to Howard’s rush of blood in 2005 when the
Coalition gained control of the Senate.

It is history that this mistake cost Howard the 2007 election, and it
reminds unions that a lot is still to be done to achieve the objectives of the “Your Rights At Work” campaign.

The ALP needs to learn in an election year that the defeat of UK Labour had a lot to do with the loss of support from traditional constituencies like teachers who were treated with arrogance by the Blair and Brown governments.

Unions need to remind the ALP that the defeat of the Howard
Government had a lot to do with the campaign to win rights at
work, a goal which is yet to be achieved. !

Published in Search news.

yraw voting-badge

‘Position Statement of Old Revolutionaries on the Present Upsurge of Worker Action in China
by Li Chengrui, et al.’

Translator’s note: “Regarding the present upsurge of worker action in China, liberals have used their discursive power in the overseas media to frame the strike wave as a tale of workers’ struggle for ‘independent unions,’ as if this were a repetition of Solidarnosc.

What do Chinese workers want? What is the direction of the Chinese workers movement?

Those who support the movement and are concerned about the fate of the working class should provide an account matching the reality of the movement. This letter of support provides a perspective different from those predominant in the mainstream media.”

Uphold the Constitution, Respect and Ensure Human Rights,
Support Honda Workers’ Just Struggles,
Condemn Foxconn’s Inhumane Management
(June 6, 2010)

To:
General Secretary Hu Jintao and Members of the Central Party Committee,

Chairman Wu Bangguo of the People’s Congress

Premier Wen Jiabao, Vice Premiers, and Members of the State Council

Compatriots throughout China, and all Media Outlets:

There have recently occurred numerous incidents in our country that signal intensified social contradictions. According to media reports, Shenzhen-based Foxconn with Taiwanese investment have treated workers as machines (or worse, just spare parts!) to generate profit for the company and instituted an inhumane management system that destroys the health and spirit of workers to the extent that some have felt that life is not worth living.

Thirteen workers in this company have jumped to their own deaths in a short period of time.

Their tragic deaths break our hearts. It is a situation that has shocked the world!

Based in Foshan, Guangdong, Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is a Japanese-owned company. While the capitalist owner has made a huge profit, the wages are too low to support workers’ livelihoods and the company’s union does not represent the interest of the workers. Nearly two thousand workers have gone on strike in their struggle for wage increases and to initiate a reform of the union.

But the Japanese management only agreed to a small increase, far from what the workers have asked.

Moreover, the management unjustifiably demanded workers to sign a “no strike” commitment and threatened to fire workers who take part in the strike. They indeed fired two leaders among the workers.

Other incidents in the media also show increased conflict between capital and labor. Some workers in Chongqing Qijiang Gear Transmission Co. Ltd were forced to work overtime during weekends and died from overwork. The long-term exhaustion, low pay, and management corruption led workers to strike.

Close to 1,700 workers from Taisheng Furniture Company, based in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, had a three-day strike to protest against overstress and low pay.

Over a thousand workers in the spare parts factory that supply Beijing-based Hyundai went on a strike to demand a pay raise. Workers at Lanzhou Vinylon Company went on strike because they cannot sustain a basic livelihood.

In Datong City (Shanxi Province), the state-owned enterprise Xinghuo Pharmaceutical Company was forced into bankruptcy and its laid-off workers had their numerous petitions refused. Following this, over 10,000 people staged a sit-in at the municipal government building; some of them were beaten up by armed police.

Workers on strike from Pingdingshan Cotton Spinning Mill (Henan Province) were brutally beaten by thugs brought in by police vehicles, resulting in injuries of many women workers.

In Shenzhen workers who are taking the lead to demand back pay or protect workers’ rights have had their names placed on various blacklists, which makes it difficult for them to obtain employment. These are just some of the recent incidents that illustrate the scope of the problem.

On the whole, the bourgeoisie have transferred the burdens of the economic crisis onto the workers and have waged a more fierce attack on them. The working class is forced to rise up and resist.

But as workers have become a weak social group in recent years, and with the deprivation of basic rights prescribed by our country’s constitution, they are in the sad situation where their deaths are unanswered, their strikes unsupported, and their grievances unheard.

According to our country’s constitution, particularly the four basic principles and the basic rights accorded to citizens, we issue the following appeal to address the current situation and problems.1

First, we should firmly support workers in Foshan Honda and other factories in their just struggles for survival and against oppression.

Article 33 of our country’s constitution states, “the state respects and ensures human rights.”

The right to strike is an inseparable part of human rights and is also a basic civic right prescribed by constitutions around the world.

We firmly support all reasonable demands that Honda workers have raised so as to change their harsh working conditions and low wages.

We are strongly opposed to the management’s threat to fire workers. The two leaders who were fired should be immediately given back their jobs.

We believe that our call will be supported by all those who uphold the authority of the constitution, respect human rights, and stand for justice.

Second, we should demand Foxconn and other similar enterprises to immediately stop their inhumane and harshly exploitative management methods.

We demand that the management respect workers’ integrity and dignity, obey the state laws, improve working conditions, strictly implement a 8-hour working day, and compensate workers for overtime.

They must ensure that workers are paid wages that are enough for their own sustenance and their reproduction.

This is the only way to ameliorate labor-capital conflicts and reduce or prevent the so-called “psychological” problems.

To elide the fundamental labor-capital contradiction by one-sidedly emphasizing “psychological counseling” is to intentionally cover up the contradiction and to confuse cause with effect.

It has been reported by the media that some who committed suicide also showed signs of bodily injuries caused by beating. There was also suspicion of some being pushed off buildings. These already warrant a criminal investigation.

Government agencies should deal with it seriously and find out the truth.

Third, unions should clearly stand on the side of the working class to represent and uphold the interests of the working class as prescribed by the constitution.

If any union organization ignores the constitution and “take the boss’ shillings and do the boss’ bidding,” then they will be spurned by the working class.
The leadership of the union in each enterprise must be democratically elected by its members. Relatives and representatives of the bosses should not be allowed to take any leadership position in the union.

If such a case is found, it should not be approved by the union at higher levels. The union at higher levels should instead help such enterprise-based unions organize an all-members meeting and help rebuild each enterprise’s union through democratic election.

Fourth, government at all levels, particularly the local government, should protect civic rights by strictly following the law, earnestly resolve labor-capital conflicts, and ensure citizens’ freedom of speech.

Government should administer according to the law and should prevent and stop incidents that violate basic civic rights prescribed by Article 33 of the constitution and other related regulations. It should actively deal with cases of labor-capital conflicts according to the law.

Ignoring workers’ reasonable demands either through inaction or siding with management should be resolutely corrected. In order to ensure people’s right to information and right to supervision, media should be allowed to freely and truthfully report on labor-capital conflicts and other cases and convey people’s voices without obstruction and interference.

Fifth, we call for the restoration of the working class as the leading class of our country and the re-establishment of socialist public ownership as the mainstay in our national economy.

Article 1 of our country’s constitution states, “The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state led by the working class on the basis of a worker-peasant alliance.”

Article 6 of the constitution states, “The basis of socialist economy of the People’s Republic of China is socialist public ownership of means of production, that is, all people’s ownership and laborers’ collective ownership.” “In the primitive phase of socialism, the state should build an economic system with public ownership as the mainstay and co-development of the economy through other ownership forms. Distribution should be based mainly on each according to his/her labor, with co-existence of other distributive methods.”

The Chinese Communist Party must be the real vanguard of the working class, strengthen its leadership of the people’s polity, and reinforce the people’s democratic dictatorship.

We call for a reestablishment of public ownership as the principal part of the national economy.

Only in this way can workers, peasants, and people in general become masters of enterprises and the country and truly implement a distribution system primarily based on labor contribution.

At present, it is imperative to improve working conditions and increase wages and benefits in the private economy (funded by domestic and foreign investments).

It is completely just to actively support workers’ struggles towards that end. But in so far as the capitalist privately-owned economy rather than the socialist publicly-owned economy dominates, the working class cannot change their weak position under structures of exploitation, nor the unfair distribution system and the disparity between the rich and poor.

Under this condition, it is also impossible to transform our export-oriented economy to one that is independent, self-reliant, and seeks to satisfy the material and cultural needs of people in the country.

Based on the present conditions, it will only be through a long-term struggle that the working class can restore its leadership position and the national economy can be transformed into one primarily based on public ownership.

We have the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and have the constitution, particularly the four basic principles at its core, as our legal instrument.

All members of the Communist Party and all people should abide by the constitution. The socialist modernization that we uphold fits the interest of the broadest range of people and corresponds with historical development of mankind. If all people who support socialism, love their country, and abide by the constitution are united and persistent, then through a long-term struggle, we will be able to realize our goal.

Signatories:

Li Chengrui (Former Director of the State Statistic Bureau)

Gong Xiantian (Professor of Beijing University)

Han Xiya (Former Alternate Secretary of the Secretariat of All-China Federation of Trade Unions)

Liu Rixin (Former Researcher at the State Planning Commission)

Zhao Guangwu (Professor at Beijing University)

1 The four basic principles include socialism, people’s democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Community Party, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.

The statement above was first published by China Study Group on 13 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. The Chinese version is available at Critique & Transformation.
URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/china150610.html

China's workers protesting

What follows is an essay developed collaboratively by SEARCH foundation members. SEARCH stands for ‘Social Education and Research Concerning Humanity’.

Australians together with the whole global community are faced with very big challenges. We need a new approach that looks for the common good rather than narrow interests, considers the long-term rather than the “quick fix”, and draws on all the capacities of humanity and nature.

To do this we must enfranchise all kinds of people in a deeper form of democracy in Australia and in all societies. This essay aims to explore this approach, by looking at the challenges facing us and at appropriate responses to those challenges, taking into account the history of previous efforts, and the values which should sustain and inform our decisions.

Social and environmental challenges

Our beautiful blue planet looks more and more like a world in deep trouble, and Australia is as much involved as any nation in contributing to economic and environmental problems and wars.

We live in a western culture of affluence, constant innovation and promise of unlimited choice and self-fulfillment, yet at the same time are cynical about powerful corporate interests. Many Australians cannot meet the ideals they set for themselves. And for others, particularly Indigenous Australians, life is a real struggle.

In 2006, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per person in Australia were 28.1 tonnes per year, nearly twice the average for rich countries and more than four times the world average, according to the Garnaut Report.

Today over 580,000 Australians are unemployed, private schools are privileged over public schools, tertiary students have to ‘invest’ in their studies, people have to pay to see a doctor and obtain medicine, and welfare payments, though widely available, are below the poverty line and severely policed.

Less than twenty years ago we witnessed the end of the Cold War, eagerly anticipated a ‘peace dividend’ and were promised real global co-operation on global warming and on global poverty.

These hopes for a better world have been set back by the continuing wars and threats of wars allegedly in reaction to the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA, by the blockage of the Kyoto Protocol process, and in the massive global debt binge and ensuing Great Recession, as the International Monetary Fund named it, of 2008-09. This global capitalist crisis is not yet over and the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved by 2015.

The euphoria of capitalists at the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to unbridled capitalism which clearly threatens the global environment and cannot deliver decent work and a good life for all, either nationally or globally.

The Cold War from 1946 to 1991 was bloody, hugely dangerous and expensive. But having the US as the sole economic, political and military superpower since 1991 has also turned out to be a scourge, with truly devastating impact in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other vulnerable poor countries.

Struggling with Capitalism – the rise of neo-liberalism

In the late 1960s almost full employment had given workers in the west more confidence in their struggles, the state was taking a larger share of income to support welfare programs, competition between capitalist countries had driven down profits, and spending on the US military-industrial complex during the Cold War, and particularly for the Vietnam War, became unsustainable.

In the mid-1970s, these dynamics sparked a major global capitalist crisis, greatly increasing financial uncertainty and instability. The profits of major corporations fell; unemployment and inflation both surged. Australian workers and their families were hit hard.

The dominant economic and political elites in the USA, Europe and Japan responded to these democratic challenges and the ensuing economic crisis by organising an assault on the welfare state, and the democratic rights and living standards of working people.

Led by Anglo capitalism-the UK under Thatcher, the US under Reagan, and later Australia under Hawke and Keating and New Zealand under Lange and Douglas-a new global economic framework known as neo-liberalism or the “Washington Consensus” emerged.

The essence of neo-liberalism is to promote the expansion of capital, regardless of the consequences for employment, social well-being and the global environment.

The main driver and beneficiary has been big US capital. The neo-liberal project destroyed the consensus approach of the post-World War II social democratic state. Social democracy had supported full employment, health, education and social safety nets, while affirming a central role for private corporate capital.

Neo-liberalism places economic motives and not compassion at the centre of all human relationships. Individuals are ‘on their own’ and must look after themselves. The neo-liberal view is that markets work best with little or no regulation and that government intervention, workers organised in trade unions, and community and environmental organisations actually cause economic crises.

So neo-liberalism advocates the selling of government assets, which belong to all citizens, and reduction of the government’s role in economic management.

Neo-liberal policies had their first trial run in Chile in late 1973, when the fascist Pinochet dictatorship, with neo-liberal advisers led by Milton Friedman from Chicago, destroyed democracy and workers’ organisations, and privatised key national assets to the benefit of large US corporations.

These neo-liberal policies of deregulation, privatisation and trade liberalisation were then imposed on poor countries by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and later the World Trade Organisation. Poor countries trying to borrow funds or repay international loans were required to privatise public assets, reduce social spending and open up their markets for foreign investment. Education, health and jobs were cut; societies were devastated.

Labour shortages in the rich countries were met with an explosion of temporary migrant workers from poor countries, with fewer rights than local workers. Temporary migrant workers were eagerly exploited by employers, and were often the victims of racism, promoted by white supremacist and fascist movements.

Neo-liberalism succeeded as a political project, becoming the ‘conventional wisdom’ of almost all governments and political parties world-wide. Corporations, parts of the middle class and the better-off working class were given a stake in the ‘home-owning and shareholder democracy’, with the promise of ever-rising asset prices, and boosted by conservative and fundamentalist religious groups who linked it all to ‘family values’.

The failure of neo-liberalism

But as an economic and social project, neo-liberalism has ultimately failed.

Firstly, it increased inequality. Most wage earners and those dependent on social security became more insecure, but those living off dividends, rents and bonuses were greatly enriched, especially during hyped-up stock market and housing booms.

Secondly, ‘the state’ got bigger, not smaller. regulation of capital itself was minimised, but other regulation was made tougher so as to support capital, including the punitive laws for trade unions and for people on social security, weaker environmental laws, and subsidies and tax breaks for large corporations. Corporate political donations virtually bought governments.

Thirdly, the driving force for capitalist expansion became profits from finance itself. Deregulated private banks, hedge funds and exotic finance products came to dominate major economies. Corporations boosted short term profits by selling assets and sacking workers, rather than seeking long term growth through investment in skills and sustainable technologies.

Fourthly, this powerful finance class, mainly in New York and London, supported the extremism of the Bush presidency, whose policies after September 11, 2001, became solely focused on unilateral preemptive wars to assert US corporate interests world-wide. Energy security for US interests and opposition to any global measures against climate change were core components of this aspect of neo-liberal politics.

Finally, neo-liberalism involved intense competition for global markets between the US, European and Japanese corporations, and between them as a whole and the poor countries.

Overall, neo-liberalism led to greater economic and social instability and resulted in the isolation of the Bush presidency. Bush’s legacy became triple disasters: the Iraq War, the drowning of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, and then the Global Financial Crisis, which now threatens the entire neo-liberal project under US capitalist leadership.

However this massive economic and social failure has not broken the political power of the neo-liberal corporate establishment. The response of the Obama administration has been ineffectual so far, and the prospect is for severe economic difficulties in the immediate future.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was associated with the rise of fascism and led to the huge devastation of World War II. Today’s global crises certainly contain these dangers.

Australia’s challenges

Many families suffered ever growing insecurity and inequality after the 1970s recession, with the worst experience being in the 1990-91 recession. Some workers defected to Howard in response, but were then hit by his WorkChoices.

The Your Rights At Work campaign against WorkChoices was an historic grassroots movement for basic rights, but the workers’ hopes have not been fulfilled by the Rudd government’s new Fair Work Act.

Australian society remains deeply divided by inequality of power and wealth: between the majority of Australians and the small minority of Indigenous Australians, between those who own and control private corporations, often based overseas, and those who work in them, and between men and women.

Industrial laws remain profoundly unfair with hundreds of legal penalties applied to workers and their unions, including imprisonment, particularly for those in the building industry. Most democratic rights and freedoms have been made unenforceable through a wave of anti-terrorism laws and two decades of ‘law-and-order’ auctions at state elections.

Despite great people’s movements for change over the last 50 years in Australia, the stark injustice to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples persists.

There have been good government initiatives to address some of these problems over recent decades, but the overall outcome remains dismal. Racist policies were imposed by the Howard government and those which underpinned the NT Intervention of 2007 have continued under the Rudd government.

Despite great progress since the 1960s by migrant workers and popular movements, as well as governments, to create an inclusive multicultural identity for Australia, racial prejudice still persists. This is particularly evident in the appalling acceptance by many people of the Howard government’s detention for years of ‘boat people’ in isolated concentration camps.

Women have made great strides in asserting their rights in almost all parts of society since the 1960s. It was a great breakthrough when the Whitlam government created the single parent’s benefit, freeing mothers from abusive relationships and enabling unmarried mothers to keep their children.

Yet governments continue with a punitive attitude to single parents, use industrial laws that allow women’s wages and superannuation to continue to clearly lag behind those of men. In most Australian states women do not have full rights to choose when and whether to have children.

Lesbians, gay men, transsexuals and bisexuals have won a degree of equality, freedom and social space also in this period, but continue to be denigrated in official policy measures, at this time through definitions of marriage.

Australia needs structural change to entrench these gains through democratic and equitable processes within the economy as well as the political process at federal, state and local levels. This is the path to a democratic, ecologically sustainable Australia within a new set of global relations.

Ecological sustainability

The complex and delicate network of interlinked ecological units that makes up our planet is resilient, but not infinitely so.

All life forms require biodiversity to survive. As other species and populations are diminished, so too are the ecological foundations for survival of human life on Earth. The United Nation’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 showed that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth, such as fresh water and fisheries, are being degraded or used unsustainably. As biodiversity shrinks, the balance of nature is disrupted and the physical, psychological and social basis for the health of humans and other species is threatened.

The potential of life for billions of humans, and millions of other species, is in jeopardy as people living in the world’s wealthiest societies that have historically used a disproportionate share of the world’s resources continue to expand their consumption way beyond Earth’s carrying capacity.

These wealthy societies are driven by a socio-economic system, capitalism, that is addicted to growth in order to survive. Indeed, the Living Planet Report 2008, produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature, indicates that humanity is now consuming resources at a rate that by 2030 will require two planet Earths and that on a per person basis people in the USA, the United Arab Emirates and Australia are consuming about four planet Earths to sustain their lifestyles.

The public debate about ‘sustainability’, as an integrative organising principle for human societies, emerged in the 1980s and refers to the capacity of ecosystems and human societies to persist and to provide the goods and services needed for life into the foreseeable future. Achieving sustainability is an ethical and social justice issue, as well as an environmental issue.

The most obvious way in which human activity is destroying the ecology of the planet today is by the emission of gases which are contributing to global warming. Currently in Australia there is no serious commitment on the part of either major political party to reduce these emissions-618 million tonnes in 2009-half of which are produced by the top 100 corporations, according to the recent VicSuper report.

Because climate change is also an emergent human rights issue, tackling it is integral to the broader goals of enhancing socio-economic development and fairness throughout the world. Linking climate change with broader sustainable consumption and production concerns, human rights and democratic values is crucial to shifting societies towards more sustainable development pathways.

Linked to global warming is the peaking in supply of oil, one of the main fossil fuels which has caused the human-enhanced greenhouse effect over the last 150 years. When new oil fields cannot replace the reserves being used from existing oil fields, and as consumption of oil and gas continues to grow, the price of oil will rise sharply. This will drive up all costs, but especially the cost of producing food and transporting it to markets. The food shortages and increased costs of food in early 2008 provoked riots, and indicate the economic and social difficulties faced by humanity as climate change, water shortages, and energy shortages have their combined impact.

Sustainability as a goal links ecology, justice and democracy. Justice to the environment is a pre-condition for ecologically and socially sustainable societies, and fundamental for human survival. Today, ecological sustainability is the focus of one of the greatest conflicts between corporate interests and peoples’ basic rights and needs.

Human and environmental values

In Australia and globally people have the values, the inspiration and the knowledge to achieve a fair and ecologically sustainable and peaceful world.

Equality of all people, commitment to participatory democracy and freedom, and respect for all cultures are deep values carried from the great democratic people’s struggles of the last three centuries into this 21st century, especially the English Revolution, the French Revolution, the 1848 revolutionary surge in Europe and the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

Care for the environment is an underlying value of indigenous cultures, and has also been an underlying feature of social movements in recent centuries, from campaigns to stop the spreading of the Sahara desert, to opposition to the shocking pollution of the industrial revolution, to defence of whales and seals and other species faced with annihilation.

The amazing election campaign of Barack Obama in 2008 showed that the values inspiring the US civil rights, anti-Vietnam War and women’s movements of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, and the older labour movement, were alive and well, only waiting for the chance to focus on a credible leader and movement for change. Community organising values and practices contributed greatly to the Obama victory.

It is the same in Australia, where, despite the strength of conservatism, our history is imbued with grassroots democratic movements for freedom, equality, rights, decent lives, peace, and the environment.

The working class values of collective strength based on democratic unity have already made Australian society one of the best parts of the world for most of its peoples. We saw in the great Your Rights At Work campaign in 2005-07 that a broad-based, principled movement of working people can overwhelm the punitive, divisive politics of individual greed which the Howard government and the corporate world promoted.

The Soviet system of the 20th century was a human and environmental disaster because of the failure to respect people’s democratic rights. The neo-liberal capitalism of today is also a profound failure on this score, despite the role of periodic elections for parliaments.

Democracy is all about people with equal rights discussing their problems, getting all the relevant information, and making decisions that they can implement. It is about respect for the majority, and the majority bound by laws and a charter of rights which protect any minority or individual from tyranny. Democracy requires access to quality education and to an open media.

There are all kinds of “communities” which need to exercise democracy, especially workplaces, local communities, cultural communities, cities, regions, nations and also the United Nations. Australian society is yet to achieve genuine democracy and equality because of the dispossession of the Indigenous Peoples in the colonial period, and because of ongoing unfair structures of class, gender and sexuality, nationality and ability, and the gross distortion of the two-party system with single-member electorates.

Solidarity is a value of individual sacrifice for the collective cause, ‘paying the price’ to win an objective that has been widely agreed by a community, despite whatever harsh conditions are imposed by those opposed to change. The strike, the picket line, the fundraising, the election day mobilisation, the many meetings, the common social funds including progressive taxation, the principled compromises for the sake of uniting a coalition, the wonderful celebrations: all are part of solidarity.

Social justice is a value that focuses on fairness and respect, and opposes exploitation, oppression and bigotry. Social justice is indivisible; there is no justice if any group is discriminated against, whether because they are women, because they are children, because they are of a different nationality or religion, because they are employees, because they are poor, or because they are the indigenous people.

In the Great Depression and the horror of fascism and World War II, many leaders recognised that social justice and peace were indivisible.

Environmental sustainability is a value with deep roots in humanity because human beings are part of nature and only survive and prosper in a richly diverse, clean and profuse natural environment.

Despite the environmental brutalism of capitalism and the Soviet system, the value of caring for nature has driven many struggles in recent centuries, with Australia’s urban ‘green ban’ movement of the BLF and residents of the 1970s, the Franklin Dam campaign in the early 1980s, the Jabiluka anti-uranium campaign in the 1990s and many native forest campaigns being high points.

Intellectual integrity means that we have to seek the truth and be open to new information and new ways of seeing our world. Emotional integrity is all about staying connected with people, not closing out the images of poverty, war and misery which at bottom are what spurs us to band together to rebel against the present order of things.

A socialism which is democratic and sustainable

Based on these values we have to create our democratic ecological socialist 21st century. There is no grand plan or blueprint for this world that we simply ‘adopt’.

We have to make this world by our collective actions, inspired by our values of democracy, social justice solidarity, environmental sustainability, and integrity. Particular strategies for immediate demands and for deeper change must be developed by negotiation between all the organisations, groups and movements involved.

We need to renew democratic left organising in Australia to assert people’s democratic control over our social resources, replacing private ownership and control with democratic public ownership and control in co-operatives, new kinds of corporations and a new kind of public ownership.

Major planning through national decisions on development and spending priorities made through political processes must be balanced by local democratic processes to counteract the tendency for bureaucratic centralism and the concentration of power.

Corporate power must not be merely replaced with bureaucratic state power if socialism is to remain dynamic and accountable to the people and environment it serves. New measures of well-being and success are needed in place of the fetish of economic growth which underpins capitalism.

The tension between local democracy and public ownership can be managed by ensuring that broad social interests are represented on elected boards and management committees, along with direct employees and consumers, working with a corporate law that puts employment, safety, ecological objectives and social responsibility ahead of profits.

Dealing with the ecological and economic crises

The ecological and economic crises feed off each other. Both are closely related to the corporate capitalist drive for expanding private profit from social production. The solutions to these two crises are inseparably linked. Here are some immediate strategies.

Dealing with global warming, the end of cheap energy, and the environmental crisis

Australia is unique in being an entire continent under one political structure, and so Australia can provide an inspiration to the world by creating a just and ecologically sustainable model for an entire continent.

To respond to the immediate challenge of global warming, Australia could produce more energy than it needs from the sun and wind if enough resources were channeled into this area.

A people’s movement has to create a majority in parliament which will confront the energy and finance corporations and demand that governments invest public funds in energy efficiency and in renewables: biomass, wind, solar and tidal.

The United Nations effort at Copenhagen in December 2009 to create a new binding treaty to cut carbon emissions was wrecked by the refusal of the US corporations to commit to any but the most token cuts, despite their historic role in creating the problem.

Australia, as a key US ally, can make an important global contribution by confronting the energy corporations and promoting a genuine plan for cuts to carbon emissions based on social and scientific reality.

This plan must aim to contain atmospheric warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees centigrade during this century, by reducing the carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere to 300 parts per million.

This is what is necessary to stop vulnerable island, delta and coastal communities from being submerged, and severe drying and rainfall impacts in Australia.

Australia must have a target for 2020 of 25 per cent to 40 per cent cuts on 1990 levels of carbon emissions, rising to 80 per cent by 2050.

A carbon tax, tight regulation of carbon emissions by industry, compensation to consumers, and massive public investment will be effective, but the current emissions trading concept put forward by the Rudd government will have virtually no impact. Privatisation of the remaining electricity systems must be stopped immediately.

Public investment must shift from motorways for both freight and passengers, to building major rail projects and urban light rail and heavy rail networks, and reinvigorating coastal shipping.

Water

The Murray-Darling crisis is only our largest river system problem, repeated on a smaller scale everywhere that water is taken for irrigation.

Governments must develop water policies that are based on an accurate assessment of what water is available, taking into account both ground and surface water, that allow for a projected general decrease in rainfall due to global climate change, and that are, above all, both equitable and sustainable.

Desalination plants are an expensive, polluting way to increase urban fresh water supplies, and place too much control in the hands of their transnational corporate owners.

Large dams, pipelines and associated infrastructure can create their own problems while not actually increasing the total amount of water in the water cycle. Conservation and recycling should be the priorities.

Water is a part of the ‘global commons’, access to drinkable water is a basic human right, and environmental flows are vital to eco-systems and all species. Recent neo-liberal policy to privatise both urban and agricultural water supplies must be reversed to provide a sustainable and fair water regime.

Forests

Globally, deforestation continues to be one of the most serious factors damaging the environment. Many species have already disappeared due to loss of habitat caused by indiscriminate logging, and many more are threatened.

Forestry practices in Australia, while not as destructive as those of some other countries, include clear-felling of native and old growth forests, use of aerial spraying of poisons and seasonal burn-offs. Wood-chipping of native and old growth forests has to stop.

Plantations are an alternative, but are a monoculture, requiring massive amounts of chemicals, using poisons against native fauna, and using large amounts of groundwater, often in competition with small farms and domestic supplies. Australia’s forest plantation sector has been caught up in the global financial crisis, and needs far more regulation and social ownership to make it sustainable.

Dry land salinity, caused by clearing native vegetation, is a serious problem affecting the rural economy, especially in Western Australia. The destruction of ecological systems such as those of the Coorong in South Australia goes far beyond economics.

Peak oil

Peak oil means that energy prices will rise sharply in coming years. There is no alternative to oil for its energy content and ease of transporting. Bio-fuels can substitute only to a small extent, because of their own costs of production and competition with food production.

Society is going to have to reorganise to use much less liquid fossil fuel, by shifting to more local production and consumption, less use of chemical fertiliser and pesticides in agriculture, and greater use of public transport systems using renewable energy. Once again, this shift can only be led by a democratically managed public sector.

Dealing with the Global Economic Crisis

The huge finance corporations which brought us the Great Recession have so far defeated any serious reform and are back to ‘business as usual’. Obama, Brown and Rudd are failing. The main countervailing power has to be organised workers and communities, as history shows.

Only strategic unionism and democratic workplace organisation can challenge corporate power and propose new forms of workplace participatory democracy, new forms of ownership and control of production. Reforms must be driven by organised workplaces and communities if they are to succeed.

The Rudd government has won community respect for the stimulus spending in 2008-09 which limited official unemployment to 5.8 per cent. Workers themselves absorbed a lot of the pain by working short-time weeks and taking unpaid and paid leave. The crisis is not over.

The Rudd Government must fund paid training days for all workers who have been put on short-time, and directly fund job creation programs for the unemployed, whose number has increased by 50 per cent since mid-2008.

Democratic re-regulation of the financial system to prevent a deeper global economic crisis in the future means much stronger transparency rules for all financial institutions, outlawing of all forms of predatory lending, strong regulation of lending to buy and trade shares, and regulation of ratings agencies.

Senior executive incomes must be cut from their present obscene levels, and bonuses that reward risk-taking behaviour for short term profit must be outlawed. This can be done using the corporations power in the Federal Constitution.

A uniform national tax on all properties over $2 million would discourage speculation and boom / bust in property prices, and help to lower the absurd prices for homes in Australia and all over the world.

The imposition of a tax of 0.1 per cent on all financial transactions-a modified ‘Tobin Tax’-would contain international financial speculation and help fund international aid to poor countries.

A publicly owned savings bank, with a board dominated by employee and community representatives, can provide low cost banking for consumers and small business as real competition with other banks.

Increased spending on public housing, including community housing associations, and incentives for private investment in affordable housing is at last being provided as part of the Rudd ’stimulus package’, but it is a vital part of a democratic future and should not be ‘wound back’.

The ’stimulus package’ spending on public transport, public education from child-care to TAFE and university, and in the public health system should also be maintained, to overcome decades of reduced public support to these vital sectors.

Public investment and incentives for private investment are urgently needed to create ‘green jobs‘ in energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable water systems, including industry and household water recycling, biomaterials, green buildings and waste recycling.

Public investment in partnership with Indigenous communities is vital to close the gap for Indigenous housing, health and education outcomes, and to encourage biodiversity conservation and environmental management on Indigenous lands.

All pensions and benefits must be increased to provide a living income, and the punitive policy of reduced payments to the unemployed and single parents must end.

Superannuation funds must be reformed to remove perks for the wealthy.

The Superannuation Guarantee Levy must be increased immediately. Super funds must be protected from stock market crashes by being diverted into government-guaranteed bonds which are used for ‘green jobs‘ initiatives to shift to an ecologically sustainable economy.

With so much pressure to wind back the emergency role of government in the economy, there has to be a vigorous democratic movement to make progress on these solutions which are all about democracy, equality and ecological sustainability.

Uncovering our socialist heritage

The ideas and values of equality, democracy and solidarity that come from the Australian socialist tradition have been submerged for the last 30 years, by the torrent of nonsense about ’self-regulating free markets’ and ‘let the managers manage’.

The best of these socialist ideas, values and ways of working need to be picked up and reinvented for these times of greater communication, travel, self-expression and aspiration.

After all, it was the rebels of Eureka who won the vote for all men in the 1850s and it was the new Australian trade unions of that era that won the first eight-hour day and minimum wage, and regulated workplaces for better safety and wages. The women’s suffrage movement won their right to vote in New Zealand and South Australia in 1894.

Socialists opposed wars of aggression and conscription from 1914, and later opposed nuclear weapons and uranium mining. Socialists stood up with Aboriginal people for their rights from the 1920s.

Communists, and socialists in the Labor Party, rebuilt the trade unions and the Labor Party itself, out of the disaster of the Great Depression. They rallied the democratic movement to oppose fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, when the conservative governments of the day were praising Mussolini and Hitler. The BLF Green Bans of the 1970s suddenly brought ‘people power’ to life in Australia.

Socialist women played a key role in the second wave women’s movement from the 1960s, campaigned for equal pay for women, and joined with other women to challenge the very idea of male superiority. Socialists worked with others to end the White Australia Policy and embraced multiculturalism.

It was the broad Left and the progressive religious communities which doggedly worked to build solidarity with the South African people against Apartheid. They worked with Indigenous people for the decade to 1967 to overwhelmingly win the referendum to allow the federal parliament to make laws to benefit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The Vietnam Moratorium Movement eventually transformed Australian society for the better in the 1960s and 70s. The Communist and Labor Left played a big and vital role in all this work. All along the way, writers and artists on the Left made a decisive contribution to Australian culture and fought the basic fight against censorship and for free speech.

These profound social achievements in Australia came through collective discussion and planning, and really determined organising around democratic and socialist principles.

The people, by using their strength in numbers, can oppose the power of the big capitalists. It is mainly a patient, ongoing process to convince people that they can make a difference, and that whatever racist, sexist or class prejudices they have must be put aside for the goal of social justice and ecological sustainability.

Socialism’s legacy: heroic achievements and tragic failures

When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto in 1848: “Workers of all lands unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”, they reflected the hopes of many millions of people as they confronted the harsh exploitation of the new capitalist system.

When in November 1917 the Russian revolution created a workers’ state to withdraw from World War I, to distribute land to the peasants and food to the people, it seemed that those hopes would be realised. A new global communist movement took shape.

The Russian revolutionaries of 1917 worked to improve the lot of the people while waiting for the overthrow of capitalism in the industrialised countries of western Europe, which did not happen. After little more than a decade, Stalin seized power and became the dictator of the Soviet Union, with appalling disregard for human rights, purges, oppression, secret police, and the ‘command economy’.

The model which emerged in the Soviet Union was wrongly promoted as the only genuine form of socialism, and communist parties elsewhere were moulded to a large extent in its image, regardless of the nature of the societies in which they were formed.

Despite this, the Soviet peoples did industrialise their economy during the Great Depression, and defeated Hitler’s Nazi invasion, at a cost of at least 20 million lives. This major contribution to the defeat of fascism in World War II made socialism even more popular, and, especially with the Chinese revolution in 1949, it continued to inspire colonised peoples to demand and fight for their freedom. Most notable was the defeat of the French and then the US military in Viet Nam by 1975 and the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in 1959. All this transformed the world in many ways, but in the end it did not transform it enough.

From the 1950s, various forms of ‘new left’ emerged in Europe to reassert the democratic character of socialism against the Soviet model. This had a big impact in Australia in the 1960s and ’70s.

The Soviet model, which was not socialism at all, collapsed because it could not provide adequate basic needs, because it was authoritarian and repressive when people expected democracy, and because it could not develop and invest in technologies which would enable its living standards and environment to improve.

Nevertheless, with the Great Recession, and the relative decline of US power, there has been renewed interest in socialist alternatives to capitalism and to the ideology of neo-liberalism. The socialist-style initiatives in Latin America in the last decade are the best example.

This resurgent interest is built on the many gains that the 20th century socialist movements left to the world, above all, strong trade union and political party traditions based on a belief in the equality of humanity and the values of freedom, peace, justice, co-operation and democracy.

Conclusion

Global warming, end of cheap energy, dwindling water supply, profound economic crisis continuing in the USA: the changes are happening now and call for rapid responses. They can’t ‘wait for the revolution’. We must work to respond to these challenges now, but in a way which opens up the chance for a new democratic ecological socialism.

We must use all the techniques and talents of our time to achieve decent secure jobs and good social security for everyone, to profoundly challenge the ideas of exploiting people and nature for private profit, to challenge ideas of male superiority and of racism. We need more profound changes in power relations than those espoused in most of the 20th century.

The democratic grassroots movement we need must have trade unions, community organisations and political parties committed to these values, and committed to coalition building rather than vanguard domination as a key principle in the project.

This is a project for a 21st century democratic ecological socialism. We need great commitment, imagination, freedom of thinking and debate, and massive educating, organising and mobilising efforts to achieve it.

Out of the discussions, the struggles and the experiences of such movements shall come a future which is worthy of the energy and the intelligence which people have applied for thousands of years to the welfare of the planet and all its inhabitants.

This essay was commissioned by the SEARCH Foundation Committee in April 2009, to elaborate on the policy statement for a new democratic ecological socialism adopted by the SEARCH Foundation AGM in November 2008.

It is a collective effort, involving activists inside and outside the Foundation, and a process of consultation with SEARCH members for the 2009 AGM and subsequently, including through our website.

This final version was adopted by the SEARCH Foundation Committee in February 2010 as a contribution to the left renewal process.
The SEARCH Foundation Committee welcomes critical constructive feedback on this essay.

First published by the SEARCH Foundation, March 2010

SEARCH – Social Education and Research Concerning Humanity – Foundation

Level 3, Suite 3B, 110 Kippax St

SURRY HILLS NSW 2010, Australia

Ph: +61 2 9211 4164

Fax: +61 2 9211 1407

Email: admin@search.org.au

Website: http://www.search.org.au/

Copyright © SEARCH Foundation 2010

right to strike on the environment

The press – e.g. SMH 9th May celebrate the DPM’s defeat of the AEU’s ban – do not mention. as shown on this blog, either the merits of the teachers’ arguments or the fact that the DPM kept Howard’s WorkChoices repressive anti-strike regime in the Fair Work Act and had all the ALP Education Ministers use these anti-strike laws to order teachers not to implement the reasonable bans with the reality of individual and union fines, so denying any right to strike.

Teachers will have varying views of the outcome.
Please look at the AEU’s position.

http://www.aeufederal.org.au/LT/index2.html

Here is one personal opinion – from Peter Curtis.

Minister Gillard agreeing to set up a working party to oversee ‘My School’ has been the consequence of many teachers across the country making it clear that we are unhappy with the government’s intolerable treatment; silencing us, and leaving us without any say in our professional conduct whatsoever.

Our collective message has been clearly expressed to our departments and ministers; we are far from happy.

Forced to conduct the NAPLAN tests we were threatened with fines and disciplinary action.

Principals were asked to organise union breakers as replacements for their own teachers.

We were right to make a stand, the frustration of our convictions has been heard loud and clear; let’s hope the minister heard and absorbed our message too.

The decision of the special meeting of the AEU federal executive: 6 May 2010 is correct to point out;

… governments and their departments take extraordinarily deplorable and unwarranted actions, ignoring the professional and educational concerns at the heart of this dispute. … the intimidation and threats of disciplinary action, the recourse to punitive legal action raising the prospect of penalties and thousands of dollars in fines against individual teachers and principals as well as the employment of unqualified people, including tourists, to supervise tests.

Teachers were divided into those who had to administer the tests; facing $6600 fines and loss of pay.

Ultimately the responsibility for the schools actions lay with these teachers. An unenviable and unreasonable position manufactured by the government and the Fair Work Act to squash our campaign. Those teachers not in the firing line would have also faced these penalties if they had refused a direction to their colleagues’s work.

We were intimidated by the courts’s invocation of these harsh penalties. Many of us were confused by the Ministers heavy-handed refusal to meet and discuss with our federal representatives.

Genuine puzzlement was evident over the behaviour of the government and the Minster’s intransigence and their contradiction of values normally associated with the ALP. This was not how ‘Labor Government’ was meant to behave; weren’t they meant to negotiate with unions?

The realisation that this government is not a government that acts in our collective interests is becoming increasingly apparent.

Minister Gillard and the corporate media will spin her explanation, but it cannot be forgotten we forced her to shift.

Up until the announcement of the working party to oversee the website, she had been refusing to entertain any discussion whatsoever.

The character whatever formation we end up with is now the critical issue. The issue of the NAPLAN test and league tables are still live issues that have to be dealt with. The AEU statement continues;

… a working party of educational experts including literacy and numeracy specialists, principal organisations and representatives of the AEU and IEUA to provide further professional advice on the use of student performance data and other indicators of school effectiveness as ACARA continues to develop the My School website.

Lifting the moratorium was a compromise for our union.

The projected moratorium on administering the NAPLAN for ‘professional and ethical’ reasons was taken primarily to avoid the laws of the Fair Work Act.

The courts of Fair Work Australia and their state counterparts were not convinced and the judges considered the moratorium to be industrial action. The political stakes had been raised. The leadership’s mistake was to avoid campaigning on the Fair work Act. This Act effectively silences our professional and political voice.

We have learnt from this experience we do not have a right to strike.

There was confusion about the legal ramifications of refusing to conduct tests. There was not sufficient solidarity between other teachers and schools, we felt isolated and consequently we lacked confidence.

Ultimately, many of us were totally unprepared for threats of fines.

Because the campaign was designed to avoid the definition of industrial action by the courts meant we were surprised and shocked to find out that we were acting illegally.

We were concerned about our reputations, and we were not confident that parents and the public understood, or would be prepared to understand. An important lesson from this is that if we avoid involving parents it will be at our political expense.

We have to learn this lesson. Education means many things to many people and we need to define our visions and ideals if we are to deserve a place at the table.

This federal government has publicly and persistently denigrated and discredited public school teachers.

The accusation by the minister that we are wrecking and spoiling her government’s project to ‘improve education’ should not be forgotten.

Gillard has declared her lack of regard for the public system, and us in the process.

We, as teachers and educators have to appeal to, and listen to all concerned people. This way we can address the publics concerns and explain our disdain for this government.

Teachers will always put children’s interests first but that does mean that on occasions we have to take action that can appear to others as detrimental to children’s interests.

yraw voting-badge

‘Thanks Jenny and our sponsors Members’ Equity Bank and Industry Funds.

Thank you Sharan for welcoming us. It is a great honour that Sharan has been elected unopposed General Secretary of the ITUC– the first woman ever to be so. It is a testimony to Sharan and the strength of the Australian unions.

It has been a privilege to work with Sharan. Her commitment to organising and growth agenda in under no doubt: she will now pursue it on the world stage.

I will also welcome our president-elect Ged Kearney this afternoon, and will have an opportunity to say a few words then. I look forward to working closely with Ged and ensuring a smooth transition. Ged will be a great president of the ACTU.

On behalf of working Australians and their families, thank you Sharan for your dedication and hard work.
It is fitting that after your long struggle – 30 years – for paid maternity leave, it is now about to be legislated as your final legacy for working women – what an achievement.

Introduction
All I’ve ever wanted to do or intend to do is work for unions. I never stop being moved by the people that we have the honour of representing, their lives, their stories. The difference that being in the union makes for them.

At my national press club address last month, I met Luzia Borges, a member of the LHMU, who has been cleaning the PMs office since new Parliament House opened – she’s outlasted 3 PMs – and many more opposition leaders.

For as long as Luzia’s worked at parliament house she’s been on a minimum wage. Proudly she’s raised 3 children. To send them to university it meant working 2 jobs, 7 days a week.

Being on the minimum wage was a struggle – especially when the Fair Pay Commission shamefully awarded NO increase last year. ZERO.

A month ago – Luzia, her workmates, and union signed their first collective agreement. It meant an 8% pay rise: a voice at her workplace.

Would this have happened under WorkChoices? No.

We all know what happened to workers on minimum wages under the Liberal party’s laws. Twice their wages were frozen. Reducing real wages by $10-$25 a week for Australia’s lowest paid.

Workers were pushed onto take it or leave it AWAs with poor wages, worse conditions.
Employers were encouraged, advantaged, by not negotiating collective agreements. Workers’ voices were silence.

We must not forget what a difference we’ve made to workers like Luzia. To have a clear agenda – to grow unions. Only strong and growing unions will give people like Luzia power.

Fair Work Act
A lot has changed in 3 short years since our last organising conference. Last time we met we were under the worst attack Australian workers had faced in a generation. This time we have an opportunity.

We must use this opportunity. We owe it to the people we represent – to people like Luzia.
These laws have the worst offending companies under WorkChoices running to The Australian saying it’s end of the world. Good.

They hate these laws. They hate that they now have to listen to their workers. That they have to talk to unions. We are seeing that the safety net, such as recently with overtime, is protecting fundamental workers’ rights, as it should. We will be vigilant, as employers test the boundaries.

Under the Fair Work Act – any agreement can be a union agreement. An opportunity to organise.
Employers have an obligation to bargain with the union in good faith. Workers have NEVER had this protection before.

For ten years mine sites in the Pilbara have locked unions out of the negotiations. Now were seeing union agreements being made.

For the first time, workers have access to a low paid bargaining stream – what an opportunity! But we need to use it. Let’s use these laws to organise.

Award modernisation
The safety net needs to be strong. Australia has a unique award system, we must ensure it’s strong into the future.

Reducing over 5000 awards to 122 was never going to be easy. I know it’s been a tough process – and not all of the decisions we agree with.

We now need to focus on protecting and enhancing the wages and conditions of workers on awards during the transition. The March ACTU Executive endorsed an action plan to:

* Secure bargaining, including using low paid bargaining stream
* Secure commitments that employers retain conditions above the award
* Obtain take home pay orders
* Enforce common claim orders
* Make sure employees know their rights

We will hold employers to account who use this process to reduce workers’ conditions. The best option is to bargain. I don’t underestimate the problem for unions – many of you have had to fight to preserve what we have got. But we can turn it to our advantage. We must stop any attempt by employers to reduce pay and conditions.

More work to do
It’s true, the Fair Work Act doesn’t give us all the rights we wanted, that we believe are necessary for working people and their unions. We can’t wait until the laws are perfect. If we do, we will fail the working people and their families who we represent.

That does not mean we do not continue to fight for improvements to the laws. We will. But, delegates – we owe it to the working people we represent – not to miss this opportunity in front of us.

This Organising Conference has to drive forward our agenda. It’s about sharing the best things that are happening in our movement.

Social and economic policy
We have a broad agenda in social and economic policy I believe working families need stronger job and income security. Too many workers are casual, short-term contract, labour hire, dependent and independent contractors – with little or no job security. Most without any paid leave: these workforce changes must be tackled. Too many employers still think they can get away with not paying workers’ entitlements when a company goes bust – that is not good enough – we need entitlements protected. In full.

I believe working families need dignity in retirement. It’s been 30 years since unions first bargained for superannuation. Over 15 years since the superannuation guarantee, that ensured all workers – not just the wealthy, or white collar – might retire in dignity. To achieve this the end game was always 12 and then 15 per cent. It’s time to finish the job.

I believe working families need stronger protections in the workplace Delegates, when I hear workers are being compelled to have their meetings under surveillance, I know something isn’t right. The recent decision in the Pilbara was wrong and is being appealed. This was never the intention of the laws.
Workers need stronger protections, not less.

Our delegates deserve positive rights – right to paid training and meetings. To represent and be represented. These are rights that give a real voice, democracy to working people. Delegates, we must continue to campaign for better laws.

Unfinished business
We still have unfinished business with the Government:

* Improvements with the Fair Work Act
* Getting rid of the ABCC – construction workers deserve the same rights as all other workers
* OHS
* Independent contractors
* Pay equity
* Award modernisation

The government has now agreed to meet with AEU over the use of tests for MySchool comparisons. Now we want the Deputy Prime Minister to listen. Our teachers deserve more respect. The ACTU supports the AEU’s attempt to get improvements and a more open and equitable school’s reporting mechanism.

Threat of WorkChoices
I have no doubt if Abbott and the Liberal party are elected they’ll make life worse for working families. For the Liberal party WorkChoices is an article of faith.

* They want to remove unfair dismissal protections
* Return to individual contracts.

We need to talk to our members about this. Australians voted once to get rid of WorkChoices, they shouldn’t have to vote a second time. It’s time to go forward –we can’t go back to Abbott and WorkChoices.

Organising
Most of all we need to growth campaigns. Each union can do it. Need to research, resource, plan, proper structures, strategies. And we will grow.

Much has changed in the almost 3 years since the last Organising Conference – but there is still: bad employer; difficult economic structures for bargaining; the need to campaign. To activate our members. To engage the community. To win.

Great work is being done in unions. Never before has there been so much unity and union alliances. Who would have thought that AWU and AMWU, AWU and MUA alliances. What’s next?

Unions and workers are driven, empowered, by the work you do as organisers. You’ve created a great opportunity for workers – now we have to use it.

I hope you enjoy this conference put on by our Organising Centre along with Member Connect. I hope you network, share, learn from each other. More over I hope the value of your work is re-enforced.

When I was a new official, after a workplace meeting one of our members, a small Greek woman, approached me and told me that my job was very important to her. I asked why? She said she didn’t speak much English – that I was her voice. That’s stuck with me.

Don’t underestimate how important your job is. It’s a hard job, but there is no more worthwhile job. We are the voice for working people and their families – we will continue to be the voice for a fairer Australia.’

yraw voting-badge

‘Australian unions launched a new national advertising campaign aimed at exposing Tony Abbott’s plans to take Australia back to WorkChoices.

The union campaign will revive the key issue of the last Federal election and highlight the danger to working Australians and their families posed by Tony Abbott’s commitment to hardline industrial relations policies.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow, launched the campaign before more than 500 unionists at the ACTU Organising Conference in Sydney today, said working Australians could not risk reversing the advances made since the last election by returning to WorkChoices.

“Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party want to bring back WorkChoices, but disguise their plan by claiming that the name WorkChoices is dead,” Ms Burrow said.

“But actions speak louder than words, and every time Tony Abbott is directly asked he tries to hide his plan to resurrect the worst aspects of WorkChoices.”

In a secret address to business executives earlier this year, it was revealed Tony Abbott is promising businesses he will reduce protection from unfair dismissal for Australian workers and bring back WorkChoices-style individual contracts so employers can dictate pay, conditions and working hours.

“…We had a mandate to take the unfair dismissal monkey off the back of small business and we will once more seek that mandate… We had a mandate to introduce statutory non-union contracts and we will seek to renew that mandate.”

Tony Abbott, 12 February 2010 address to Qld Chamber of Commerce and Industry

The union campaign will include a new series of national television advertisements, information for union members and workplaces, and the latest social media technology.

The television advertisements, that have begun screening, feature real victims of WorkChoices talking about their experiences and why it should never happen again.

ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence said unions would always push for improvements to workers’ rights and it was essential not to go backwards to the Liberal’s WorkChoices.

“The Rudd Labor Government’s changes are a good first step and more needs to be done to build on the Fair Work laws – especially for workers in the construction industry and those covered by awards,” Mr Lawrence said.

“The Australian public voted at the last election to get rid of WorkChoices and today our message to Tony Abbott is clear and simple: ‘WorkChoices: whatever the name, never again’.”

Contact Mark Phillips

Labour Law

There should be a right to strike over worker claims that address the environmental crisis.

But the Rudd government has kept Howard’s repressive WorkChoices anti-strike regime.

Why should unions be penalised when bargaining with legitimate industrial pressure on environmental protection claims?

Why should workers be not legally allowed to attend legitimate protests, such as community rallies against corporate and government failure on global warming?

Why should employees be victimised by employers or the government for expressing their voice on climate change?

Why should it be unlawful to impose legitimate green bans supported by the community?

Why should union pickets on the environment be unlawful?

Despite the YRAW campaign, such workplace rights are denied in Gillard’s Fair Work Act.

Unions cannot – without legal risk – campaign on global warming issues with industrial action in reserve, except for narrow, uncertain enterprise protected action.

The scientific evidence explaining the global warming and environmental breakdown shows the ecology is in crisis – an environmental emergency.

The financial capitalist crisis and global warming are the major challenges of this century.

Good policies exist for ‘green jobs’ in renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable water systems, biomaterials, green materials, green buildings and waste recycling, with up to half a million jobs to be created.

Unions’ ability to negotiate advances with lawful workplace pressure is severely limited.

Workers can talk to employers on green jobs, but not promise lawful strike pressure.
Employers legally contest with technicalities that strike action on the environment does ‘not pertain to the employment relation’ and is ‘unlawful.’

Strikes are outlawed, workers ordered back to work and unions fined when organised during the life of the union collective agreement.

Accepted International Labour Organisation ILO principles of freedom of association say workers have to be free to join unions and collectively organise and withdraw their labour-power over whatever issues are democratically decided, including global warming.

Green bans industrial action backed by citizens’ support in a democracy must not have workers or unions penalised.

In the 1970s, the NSW Builders Labourers Federation embarked upon green bans to protect the environment by refusing to take jobs constructing a luxury complex on undeveloped bushland respecting community opposition to this project.

The environmental and community positive value of the green ban supported by citizens’ action has been widely accepted over the last 20 years.

Environmental union action, although unlawful at common law and breaching competition law, the Trade Practices Act, was not always penalised in practice (as it is under Rudd).

An important grounding of the right to strike is in democratic principles that are wider than collective bargaining, here on the environmental concerns.

Considerations of a social character should be permitted to influence the market-led interests often taken by employers to extend the concept of workers’ ‘self-interest so to accommodate industrial action taken on a principled stance.

This links the right to strike to the socio-economic interests of workers.

The Sydney ‘green bans’ were where democratic procedures had not decided how to develop Sydney before the labourers stepped in; profit making builders had.

The green bans take a step further a union goal traditionally applied to setting wages and conditions; substituting a conscious group decision for a market determination.

Such strikes are also justifiable on the grounds of individual conscience and moral autonomy or as an extension of free speech.

Indeed a strike is an aspect of acting as a responsible citizen, a role that cannot simply be suspended during working hours.

As well as the Fair Work Act’s severe restrictions, Howard’s anti-union Building and Construction Industry Act – not yet repealed – outlaws green bans.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission interrogates, in breach of civil liberties and prosecutes workers and unions for legitimate industrial action, such as on the environment. See www.rightsonsite.org.au

Bob Brown: ‘Green bans are increasingly important as we head into an era of climate change over the next 10 years. The Greens policy is to allow workers to make climate change not just a household issue, which they already are, but a workplace issue.

The Greens have a very clear policy on this that allows workers to have the internationally recognised right to strike for whatever matter they choose, if that’s an environment matter, so be it.’

Campaigning for the environment means campaigning for the right to strike.

See my earlier posts on this blog on the right to strike.

right to strike on the environment